54% European e-shoppers made cross-border purchase

Around 14 percent of all online shoppers in Europe purchase fresh food and beverages online. And over half of European e-shoppers shopped online at foreign websites this year. This is shown in the latest E-shopper Barometer report from DPDgroup.

The report highlights trends such as online purchasing experience, cross-border ecommerce, mcommerce and delivery and payment preferences. Kantar TNS interviewed almost 25,000 participants across 21 countries and one of the conclusions of this survey is that the share of cross-border shoppers in Europe has increased.

Cross-border ecommerce has large growth potential in Europe

Now, 54 percent of European e-shoppers have made a cross-border purchase, which is 2 percentage points more than last year. Among these shoppers, two out of ten purchases are made from a foreign website. “Intra-European purchases are declining in favor of purchases made from Chinese websites. AliExpress is the main driver of this growth and is clearly targeting the European market”, DPDgroup writes. “With around one third of e-shoppers saying they are interested in starting to buy abroad in the near future, cross-border e-shopping has large growth potential in Europe.”

The study also shows that online shoppers in Europe buy online from a variety of devices. Consumers are more and more using smartphones to purchase online. Still, laptops and desktops remain the main devices used to purchase online. Online shoppers in Europe don’t buy exclusively from one device and 43 percent think that have a mobile-friendly website is an important purchasing criterion.

The smartphone is, on average, used by 39 percent of European online shoppers, an increase from 5 percentage points compared to last year. Especially in Romania (65%) and Croatia (56%) the smartphone is a popular device to use while shopping online.

Fresh food and beverage online

Since January this year, 14 percent of consumers have already shopped fresh food and beverages online. Most of them are regular buyers, as 1 percent of online shoppers buy this type of product at least once a month. Especially in the UK, it’s an important market: 27 percent of online shoppers have ordered fresh food and beverages online. In Spain, 18 percent of online shoppers have done the same.

The report also shows that 17 percent of European online shoppers regularly use parcel shops and that the use of this delivery method is particularly popular in France, where 58 percent of online shoppers use parcel shops. And in Estonia it’s all about lockers, as 80 percent regularly choose this delivery option.